


Flat White

by Reavv



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Different Powers, BDSM, Eventual Smut, M/M, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 07:05:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12271389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reavv/pseuds/Reavv
Summary: In a world where the Vongola sons never die, Reborn never comes to Namimori to train Tsuna. The seal never breaks, and Tsuna lives with the weight of being a shattered Sky, of never having guardians, of never being a mafia boss.He opens a coffee shop instead.





	Flat White

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaha, more WIPs you say? 
> 
> The threesomes and bdsm come in later, but I figured I'd tag now in case that wasn't your cup of tea.

Tsuna grows up from a shy, bullied teen into a quiet, bitter adult. He sheds his no-good title slowly, carefully, but it’s left its mark on him. There’s always been a part of him buried deep that thinks he should have more than this cramped apartment above a cramped coffee shop, but he’s worked hard for it. Twenty-five and a business owner isn’t a bad end for a boy who once figured he’d die without a single friend.

Although he’s not sure he should count Hibari as a friend, really. Not when as kids Tsuna spent more time running away from him, and it was only after his seal started cracking under the pressure of his fracturing flames did Hibari think he had anything worth paying attention to. And it’s not like Hibari has friends, anyway. Even Kusakabe couldn’t really be considered a friend; he’s more of a vassal.

But they’re something. The forgotten son of Vongola and the self-proclaimed protector of Namimori.

“Good morning, Tsu-kun,” his mom says with a smile, ruffling his head as she passes him at the till. Nana bakes most of his small selection of sweets, since Tsuna still burns anything that’s not consumed liquid. She has a surprising variety of pastries and breads that she rotates in and out, despite the fact that Tsuna knows she doesn’t have the chance to practice at home, where there’s no oven. As far as Tsuna is concerned, the only thing his useless father gave Nana was the old family cookbooks.

“Morning, Mama,” he says through a yawn, pushing his hair down again. He should probably push off of the counter and set the coffee to brewing, but he’s just tired enough he’s finding it hard to move. The one thing he regrets about choosing a cafe instead of something like a corner store is just how early he has to get up. He’s never been an early riser.

Nana heads into the small kitchen behind the counter and Tsuna finally lifts his hands off the granite to start the slow shuffle into productivity. He opens at seven, so he still has an hour to get everything ready, but if there’s one thing he’s learnt from managing his own business, is that you’re never really ready for the day. There’s always something.

Today it seems to be a sudden lack of skim milk. He knows there should be a spare jug somewhere, he just can’t seem to find it. There’s no way he’s going to be able to go the whole day with the half-jug he currently has.

He’s bent over, peering into the small fridge besides the espresso machine, when the sound of a knock on the door has him startling and banging his head against the counter.

“Fu—” he starts, muffling the rest of the swear into his sleeve as he turns. Miura Haru stands outside the door, waving emphatically. Tsuna’s sole worker is cheerful and hardworking, but sometimes he has to wonder why she picked a shop like _Caffè Arrosto Scuro_ when he knows she could get into university on her math skills alone.

“Morning!” the girl chirps as he unlocks the door, unreasonably chipper so early in the morning. Tsuna mutters his own hello and heads back to the counter as Haru quickly sets about getting ready. The jug of milk remains elusive, and he quickly says a prayer for his own patience in dealing with whoever’s going to come in just as the last of it runs out.

There’s a twinge of pain as he settles back behind the counter, a reminder from his broken intuition that he could find the milk, if only the stupid seal wasn’t still in the way.

Tsuna sighs, idly curses his absent father, and resigns himself to the day.

—

Tsuna knows about the mafia because Hibari knows about the mafia. When they’re nineteen and on the fringes of whatever relationship they have now, Hibari’s mother comes back from business and notices the broken sky her son has started to chase. She drops just enough hints to cause Hibari—and thus the disciplinary committee—to ferret out every last scrap of information they can get their hands on.

Hibari, for his part, is happy about unlocking his Flames and being able to punish people in more creative ways. Tsuna’s just content to finally put words to the unsettled feeling he’s lived with ever since he was a child.

Locking a Sky’s Flames—especially as a child when they are meant to grow—does more damage than just ostracizing them. Tsuna will never be able to have guardians. He’ll never be a true Sky, just left with the remains of his shattered Flames. If it had been broken when he was still a teen, and he had the support of guardians...

At least it hasn’t driven him crazy, yet.

He pokes at the metaphorical spot where his seal resides and is mostly successful at not throwing up. Across from him, Hibari glares at his hands, as if it’s Tsuna’s fault that no matter how he stretches, the seal remains.

“Herbivore,” Hibari snaps, and it’s a wonder how much he can fit into one word. Tsuna winces.

“I’m not sure why you’re bothering,” he sighs. “It’s not like even if I did break the seal I’d be useful for anything. Shattered Skies, even the ones that don’t go crazy, can’t really do much.”

Hibari grunts, but as usual doesn’t explain whatever convoluted thought process is going on behind him dragging Tsuna away from his counter and to the table farthest from the door. Kusakabe stands nearby, like some sort of bodyguard. Tsuna thinks somewhat amusedly that it’s more likely that he’s there to guard the general populace from Hibari than the other way around.

“I still won’t be able to last in a fight with you,” Tsuna points out, poking once again at the scarred-over wound of his Flames. The sensation sends goosebumps down his spine, but it’s hard to tell if it’s _bad_ or not. Some weird mix of pleasure and pain, like playing with a loose tooth.

“Do it anyways,” Hibari grunts, and then buries his face in his matcha latte, as if even that much talking is too much. Tsuna leans back and eyes him.

“You’ve got something planned, don’t you?” he asks somewhat sardonically. When Hibari just continues to glare at him over the rim of his cup, Tsuna sighs and gives in. There’s no real use in complaining. Hibari does what Hibari wants, and that's not likely to change.

“Fine. I’ll take a look—again—when my shift ends. But I can’t keep taking breaks like this when there’s customers in the shop,” Tsuna says, gathering the miscellaneous dishes scattered around the table. Hibari has a surprising sweet tooth. Tsuna idly notes to tell Nana to start baking more _pizelle_.

Hibari glares at him, as if to say that the needs of Tsuna’s customers—paying customers, not weird, aggressive ex-senpais that refuse to pay despite being richer than some small countries—are beneath his notice, and should be beneath Tsuna’s too. Tsuna just snorts at his expression and heads back towards the counter. He passes Kusakabe and shares a wry smile.

Rich kids, right?

—

Weekdays he has Haru help him at the till while he makes drinks, a steady grind from eight to four that slows some time near dinner and then picks up again during the night. Tsuna’s shop is unique in that he stays open during the evening hours—he needs the money that comes in with the night crowd, and it lets him take care of things like budgeting and inventory when there’s a lull. More than that, he lives above the shop, so it’s not like he has a home he needs to get to.

Nana comes in the mornings, although not every day. The Italian delicacies she crafts are just unique enough—and authentic enough—to give him an edge over his competitors. Part of him chafes at the nod to his heritage: he’d rather forget the blood running through his paternal line, but he’s not one to hurt his own business because of a little spite.

He has a group of regulars: students and businesspeople, tired eyes and nervous hands. A few he recognises from school: his old crush Kyoko and her friend Hana, Yamamoto Takeshi and his crushed legs bound in a sticker-encrusted wheelchair, a wild-eyed Mochida Kensuke.

What he doesn’t have: Italian mafiosi crashing through the windows, breaking glass and splattering blood all over the display case. He knows they’re mafia because they’re wearing slick black suits and carrying guns, and he know’s they’re Italian because they’re swearing in it.

Tsuna finishes cleaning the mug he’d been in the middle of rinsing—not that it’ll help much, since he’s pretty sure he’ll have to toss the whole lot of them for biohazard contamination, considering the amount of blood is now coating his counter—and slowly places it in its rack. He counts to ten. Then twenty. He gets to fifty-five before the fact that the mafiosi are _still_ yelling and shooting everywhere outside his shop snaps what patience he has left.

Haru—common sense for once overriding her cheerfulness, and thus safely cowering behind the counter—squeaks as he brushes past her and strides over to the broken window. Luckily there wasn’t anyone besides them in the shop, otherwise Tsuna would be a lot more cautious in showing his hand like this.

Outside the fight is still heated, and it looks like it’s a large group of men against three, one of which was the mafioso that broke his window. At first glance the larger group would appear to have the upper-hand, but that’s only at first glance. Tsuna has to pause when he sees one of the three brandish a sword in the directions of the bullets. A sword. He knew mafiosi were dumb—just look at his father—but really. But the swordsman does more than just deflect the incoming barrage, he somehow does it in such a way that the first line of men goes down with holes made from their own bullets.

A stray bullet goes flying past his cheek, and his anger comes boiling back up. Does no one understand how expensive it is to be a business owner these days?

“Enough!”

The world stutters, stops. Restarts.

—

Tsuna doesn’t have Flames. Not really. Whatever pitiful handful he’s retained through the years are locked tight behind his seal. He’s been told by the Flame expert Hibari coerced into taking a look that he feels rather like a void when it comes down to it. Nothing comes out of a vacuum. A Sky without a planet to bind to. Might as well be the absence between objects in space.

It’s why he can’t reach out and tie anyone to him as a guardian—he lacks anything for that sort of bond to latch onto.

But even with all the pain of shattering, there’s a few upsides.

Tsuna pulls, reaching out with the Sky attraction that’s been twisted and bent, tugs on the Flames of every single Flame-active in the area—and consumes them.

Love turned into possession, the gluttonous greed of a Sky that will never find guardians, he takes all that he is and opens wide, the sieve of his soul pulling in anything caught in its radius.

The men drop like flies, bodies shocked into numbness, their will literally being drained from them. Some fight—mostly the three he’d already pegged as the stronger ones—but even they don’t have a defense against something they’re so attuned to. Skies are what the rest of the Flames revolve around.

The last one standing, a sharp-looking man with a scar bisecting an extremely impressive snarl, digs his feet into the broken asphalt as if it’s a physical force he’s pushing against. Tsuna raises a brow at the strength. This is the first time he’s met someone able to resist; even Hibari had to develop an immunity.

He’d be worried, and there is a part of his brain that’s been trembling ever since the fight broke out, but in the haze of this pseudo-Dying Will, he can’t feel anything but the avaricious greed of his broken Flames and his irrational anger.

“Trash,” the man snarls, pushing forward against the black hole that Tsuna has become like the answer to a flood is more water. Tsuna drinks down his ever-expanding Will like it’ll fill up the void inside and smiles. He tastes like spice, something poisonous and burning, and it’s the best meal he’s ever had. He can feel the pull strengthen, becoming ever more heavy in the air. He notices through the fog of his mind that a few of the fallen men have stopped breathing.

He thinks he could pull until their hearts stopped beating, bodies giving up on life through sheer lack of Will, and he wonders how far he’ll have to reach for the same to happen to the slowly bending man in front of him. How deep he’ll have to stretch, how wide he’ll have to open up.

He watches a bead of sweat drip down the man’s face, the burning hate in his eyes never flickering even though his knees start to shake. The shaking hands that even now grasp his guns and aim. Thinks he could make this man kneel if only he pulled a little harder.

He thinks he can do it. Thinks he wants to do it.

He thinks—

There’s a sound like thunder, and Tsuna blinks awake. He’s staring up at the sky—blue, slightly clouded, not a metaphor for any sort of Flames, flat on his back. A figure wavers in his view, slowly focusing into shape.

“Herbivore,” Hibari grunts, dabbing at the blood on his face like a cat cleaning itself. He’s wearing a self-satisfied expression, and Tsuna thinks distantly that it suits him.

Then he has to wonder why Hibari is bleeding in the first place.

“You’ve made a mess of the street,” and that’s Kusakabe, bending down to check his pulse. Tsuna weakly bats the other man away, hands numb and uncooperative. He feels like he’s just been hit by a freight-truck.

He supposes Hibari is close enough.

“You hit me,” he slurs.

“You were breaking the peace,” Hibari says, leaning back. Tellingly, he doesn’t get up and leave. Tsuna wonders if he’s more injured than he looks.

“They started it,” Tsuna mumbles. It comes out slightly garbled, but understandable.

“And they have been punished.”

Tsuna squints up and tries to put his thoughts in order. Eventually he has to admit defeat and pushes up to take a look at the ruins around him. The police have arrived, he thinks with some surprise.

To his right the man with the scar sits, staring at him. There’s a smear of blood across his lips—the result of taking one of Hibari’s tonfa to the face, he’s pretty sure. He’s eyes aren’t any calmer now that Tsuna’s no longer boiling from the inside out because of his defective Flames.

“...What,” he asks, turning his eyes towards Hibari and Kusakabe in desperation. Hibari ignores him, content, it would seem, to go back to licking his wounds now that Tsuna is somewhat lucid.

“We don’t have the authority to hold him,” Kusakabe says, somewhat apologetically, “the others all had warrants or were small-time—him and his gang are a little more...troublesome.”

Tsuna stares at him. Hibari—and thus Kusakabe—have been special investigators for the police for over four years now. They have almost as much power, and definitely more freedom, than most of the police force combined. That they don’t have authority means…

“Vongola,” Tsuna mutters in disgust. He can feel the mafioso’s attention sharpen at his words, but he ignores him and starts the arduous process of standing up.

“You’re weak,” the man spits, staying where he is. Tsuna has the vague thought that he must be more injured than he looks, to be sticking around. Now that the fog has lifted a little he can see the two others that were fighting with him. Both of them are still passed out.

“How long?” Tsuna asks Kusakabe, continuing to ignore the mafioso.

“You’ve been out for about ten minutes now. We’ve taken the others into custody, and a few of them have woken up. Looks like the weaker ones recover faster,” Kusakabe responds, consulting a clipboard in hand.

Hibari finishes whatever doctoring he was doing and starts the even more meticulous cleaning of his tonfa. Tsuna idly notes that one of them appears to have a bullet graze on it.

“The stronger they are the more I end up taking,” Tsuna hums in agreement. Makes sense that the ones with less Flame activity would feel the aftereffects less.

“Oi, you listening to me, trash?” the man snarls, struggling to his feet. His height is very conducive to looming, but unfortunately for him, Tsuna has a lot of experience being the shortest in a room. Hibari pauses just long enough to regard the mafioso, no doubt checking to see if another fight is brewing, and then goes back to his weapons.

“I don't have Flames, of course I’m weak,” Tsuna snaps his way, frustration pushing back the last of his disorientation. He’s got no patience for the mafia and its self-centred attitude.

“Then what the fuck did you do?” the man spits back, puffing up like a giant rooster. No wonder he wears feathers, Tsuna can’t help but think.

“Nothing I’m going to tell you,” Tsuna snorts.

The man makes a sound that resembles nothing more than a growl and goes for his guns again. Hibari, attention suddenly sharpened, grinds his tonfa against one another. The sound is accompanied by the lazy glow of his Flames.

“Let me remind you that Vongola’s operations in Japan are tenuous at best. Any of the local yakuza groups would love to run you out of the country, especially now that you’ve gone and brought other mafia families into play,” Kusakabe interrupts.

“Those trash? They can’t even be considered mafioso,” the man says.

“They have guns and speak Italian, that’s all anyone here will care about. Which reminds me,” Tsuna says, turning to Hibari, “why haven’t you confiscated his guns yet?”

Hibari eyes him like he’s measuring his intelligence and coming up short. He then sweeps a look at the man, lingering on the white-knuckle grip of his hands, before he snorts and starts to walk away. Kusakabe marks something in his ever-present clipboard and smiles.

“Wait, don’t tell me it’s because you want another fight later. Hibari? You’re supposed to be a part of the police! Hibari!” Tsuna watches him walk out of the rubble of the ruined street, scattering the miscellaneous police officers working the scene, and sighs. How Hibari has been able to operate in any sort of official capacity still baffles him. But then again, even the police force has been cowed at this point. It’s not likely that anyone would complain.

There’s a sound from the ground as one of the man’s companion’s starts to wake. He wouldn’t say that the Italian relaxes, per say, but his attention shifts enough that Tsuna feels comfortable enough in turning to Kusakabe completely.

“Well, I’ll leave cleanup to you and your team. You probably have about an hour before the effects clear completely,” Tsuna says to him, low enough his voice only barely reaches the quickly-stirring mafioso. He has a feeling it would be harder to escape if the awakening wasn’t so...explosive.

He quickly scurries down the street while the swearing starts, ducking under the police tape. He figures he’ll sleep at Nana’s for the night, instead of giving up his home to mafia scrutiny. Bad enough he’s sure they noticed which shop he came out of, there’s no reason to let them know he sleeps there too.

He has a feeling this won’t be the last he sees of them, anyways.

—

Xanxus watches the man run away, turning a corner and disappearing from sight, and smothers the urge to go running after him. He wants answers, and he wants them now. More than that, the thought of letting him go unpunished rankles.

He can still feel the aftershocks of whatever he did, the numbness in his fingers and the slightly elevated heart rate, but more than that, he’s hesitating because his Flames are still stuttering. Whatever happened, for a couple seconds there it completely suppressed his Sky and Wrath Flames. It wasn’t until the other one showed up and knocked the man out that he gained any sort of control back. Even now that he’s slowly recovering, he’s not sure of his chances if he has to fight at full power. There’s no way he was going to show weakness, especially with an unknown.

It’s the most infuriating, rage-inducing thing he’s had to deal with in a long while.

“Oi, shitty boss,” Squalo mutters, stumbling upright. Xanxus kicks him down again and stomps down on his weird sword-hand for good measure. He was no use in either the Flame suppressor attack, nor in the fight after with the police investigators. As far as Xanxus is concerned, he should be dead for his weakness.

“Shut up,” he snaps, nose wrinkling when all that his lieutenant does is groan faintly and twitch.

Unlike Squalo, Lussuria snaps awake all at once, sitting upright with a rather eerie grin. The idiot with the pompadour steps aside without looking and marks something else in his clipboard, and Xanxus has to strangle the urge to shoot him just to reassert some normality into the situation. But he’s not wrong in that the Varia’s situation in Japan is pretty unstable, considering how unfriendly the country is to the mafia.

“I had the _best_ dream,” Lussuria crows, standing and dusting himself off.

“Did it involve getting your dick cut off—” Squalo grunts, rolling out from under Xanxus’ foot and Lussuria’s incoming fist, rising first to his knees and then to his feet. The two quickly get to squabbling, aiming to maim.

Xanxus ignores them and casts an eye back in the direction the man had run off to. Now that his rage has cooled a little, he can’t help but think something about him was strangely familiar. He definitely didn’t look like the average Japanese businessman. Too much blond. And something about the cut of his jaw kept giving him déja vu.

“Enough,” he snaps when Squalo is finally recovered enough to give Lussuria a cut, “we’re heading out.”

“Thought you wanted to investigate why the Colombo were moving into some backwards town,” Squalo says, leaning out of the way of one of Lussuria’s swings.

“Yeah, didn’t you want to find the lost son or something like that? Where’s the romance in quitting now?” Lussuria says with a grin.

“Fuck off,” Xanxus growls, finally giving into the urge and shooting them both in the head. Since his guardians are all Varia quality, they dodge like they’re supposed to and shut up. He can blame not using his Flames to make the bullets undodgeable by the way they still are sluggish to answer his will, and not on some sort of emotional weakness on his part.

“The trash are taken care of, and Enrico doesn’t expect us back for another month,” he mutters, holstering his guns in his coat. He’s already turning around to get back to their hotel when a voice stops him.

“Ah, so you will be staying around? Let me be the first to welcome you to Namimori, then,” the man with the pompadour Xanxus had pretty much forgotten about says. Xanxus side-eyes him.

“My name is Kusakabe Tetsuya,” he continues, and Xanxus grinds his teeth.

“I don’t fucking care who you are—”

“—and I’m the one who will be deciding whether every yakuza, police officer, and independent in Japan knows of your involvement here, so I would suggest you listen to my advice.”

Silence. Xanxus reaches for his guns.

“Also, I can explain what happened to your Flames.”

—


End file.
